Allegations that an online charter school may be getting paid for hundreds of students who haven’t logged on in months has fired up the debate about how to track schools that don’t have classrooms, but do get millions in state funding.
The two ranking members on the Ohio House Education Committee both got an anonymous e-mail showing 402 students were truant for months at Ohio Virtual Academy, which has more than 13,000 students – but only 14 of those students have been withdrawn.
Democratic Rep. Teresa Fedor (D-Toledo) says that suggests that the statewide online charter school is getting millions from the state for 388 students who should have been disenrolled months ago.
“If there’s a problem in the system and they’ve known it for months – what other system would allow this to go on?” said Fedor.
“This is the Department of Education. These are our children’s lives and futures we’re talking about, and monies we don’t have to waste. We just can’t waste that money. So if that problem’s been known, I want somebody’s head.”
While Republican Rep. Bill Hayes (R-Granville) agrees with Fedor that the state auditor should investigate, he’s concerned about the source of the e-mail. And he’s not joining Fedor in demanding the state school superintendent answer questions before the committee.
“Why would I? We’re not the investigatory part of the state government when it comes to situations like this,” said Hayes. “We don’t investigate. We’re policy people.”
This isn’t the first time questions have been raised about online charter schools and enrollment and attendance. Auditor David Yost brought up his concerns in January, when he unveiled results of an unannounced head count of 30 charter schools that showed what he called “substantial gaps” between the numbers of enrolled students reported to the state and the actual number of students in class.
“Now that doesn’t necessarily come to the conclusion that we have ‘ghost students’ here,” said Yost. “But what it does mean is that there are significant deviations in the data and that we need to ask a large number of questions in terms of policy on how we’re accomplishing funding, and what kind of standards we have.”
Yost noted in January that one of the ways online charter schools report their attendance to the state, the Educational Management Information System, hadn’t been working properly – perhaps for months. John Charlton at the Ohio Department of Education says the system went a long time without being upgraded but is working now and has been improved.
He confirms that charter schools get paid based on enrollment, not on attendance, student performance or graduation rates. And he says charters must provide monthly enrollment numbers to ensure the payments they get are accurate. “Nobody’s getting free money,” said Charlton. “The system is designed that, at the end of the year, you get the exact amount of money you should have gotten.”
That’s the case at Ohio Virtual Academy, according to Kristin Stewart, its head of schools. Stewart says there are policies in place to dismiss kids who don’t log the required number of hours. “And we even back-date anyone to the last time they logged in, so even if they were here for a short time, we would not be funded for that.”
Asked why these allegations have been raised, Stewart replies: “I think that there are people who like to stir the pot. And they know charter schools are not always popular with many people, and so right now during this political climate and this political time, I think people just want to see if they can point fingers and get allegations out there that hurt reputations.”
And Stewart insists the allegations against Ohio Virtual Academy are false, and says she’s working with auditors now, and that anyone who wants to audit the school’s books is welcome to do so.
